Saturday, February 5, 2011

London Book Fair 2011

Florin Bican and Gabriela Boiangiu giving a speech at the London Book Fair 2011, presenting the Cook-A-Book Pancyclopedia Volume I

"By definition, being an illustrator means that you can take advantage of your artistic skills in order to simply depict the script of a story already created by the writer. If we think of the illustrator in these terms, it means One can only expect good drawings from a crafty person.

When as a child I started reading my first books, I remember being fascinated by the images going along side the words. For a young child the images communicate more than the words, as the latter are abstract and strange. With time the balance changes. We lose our childhood imagination, we understand the written words and we solely rely on them. I remember how I would lose myself into the images and I would create my own personalised stories going alongside the official story written by the writer. But of course, that made me a lousy reader as I did not practice my literacy skills as I was expected to do.

I understood then that a good illustrator is not just an artist who translates the words in a story, but a unique creator of a visual world which although inspired by the text will feed and stimulate children's imagination way beyond what we can expect. The image is not just a visual aid, the illustration works alongside the written story, it enriches and empowers it. The story becomes memorable only because of the two symbiotic elements: written words and image." (Gabriela Boiangiu, 2011)

For more information on the London Book Fair 2011 and possible contacts for future projects please contact Gabriela Boiangiu:gabi_art@hotmail.com